The Army and Marine Corps will be in the market for a new generation of ground vehicles soon. But acquisition officials there should think hard before they buy, according to Dr. Andrew Krepinevich, the president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Krepinevich and his co-author, Eric Lindsey, wrote that the while both services are in the early stages of vehicle modernization, those efforts “will be severely constrained by the budget cuts looming over the Department of Defense.”

The report found a number of “trends,” that will impact vehicle requirements, including:

“The evolution of the armor/anti-armor competition” — the fluctuation between efforts to create capabilities that defeat vehicle protection vs. those that protect combat vehicles.

“The proliferation of precision-guided weaponry” — The increasing use of guided rockets and other artillery by both state and non-state actors

Francis Rose is the host of In Depth, which airs weekdays from 4-7 p.m. on 1500 AM in the Washington, DC metro area and online everywhere. Francis has covered all three branches of the federal government as a broadcast journalist since 1998. He joined Federal News Radio in 2006, and launched In Depth in 2008 as a daily show focused on connecting federal executives to the information they need to do their jobs better.